I see many people talking about the fact that we need to do better at diagnosing and treating people with mental illness. It's a nice thought, but unless I missed it, no one has really proposed a real solution. Yay, we can start the discussion on it, but mental illness is a health issue, and it's not going to be a simple or quick fix, and it definitely won't be free. Our healthcare system is a shambles as it is. Are people actually proposing putting more money into the healthcare system to deal with this?

I see a lot of people saying we should be arming teachers and principals or beefing up security. I already stated in another thread that I find it hard to believe that you'd find teachers being willing to work in those conditions. Sooo...what? Are we going to just ask for volunteer teachers to pack heat? Are we going to require it? Are we going to pay them for the training needed? Cutthemdown responded that we should fire the worst teacher and hire a security guard and just move that teacher's kids to another classroom, as if class size were not already a big problem. Are we really proposing adding an "armed security" line item to school budgets that are already stretched to the limit?

For all his lunacy, Cut has it right about the Second Amendment folks...they're too cowardly to simply come out and say "a few innocent victims is acceptable collateral damage for my right to own a gun." They camouflage it in analogies to car accidents, knife slayings and bombings, neglecting the fact that, in many cases it takes a completely different psychological profile to pull a trigger than it does to build a bomb or slit a throat. To say that this killer in Connecticut would have just built a bomb or gone on a knife rampage if he couldn't have gotten his hands on some guns is not only over-simplifying a complex situation, it's jumping to a conclusion that no medical professional would...but then again, there goes science again, injecting facts into a discussion fueled by emotions.

I also find it troubling that there are people still viewing this as an isolated incident.

February 22, 2012—Five people were killed in at a Korean health spa in Norcross, Georgia, when a man opened fire inside the facility in an act suspected to be related to domestic violence.

February 26, 2012—Multiple gunmen began firing into a nightclub crown in Jackson, Tennessee, killing one person and injuring 20 others.

February 27, 2012—Three students at Chardon High School in rural Ohio were killed when a classmate opened fire.

March 8, 2012—Two people were killed and seven wounded at a psychiatric hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when a gunman entered the hospital with two semiautomatic handguns and began firing.

March 31, 2012—A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mourners at a North Miami, Florida, funeral home, killing two people and injuring 12 others.

April 2, 2012—A 43-year-old former student at Oikos University in Oakland, California, walked into his former school and killed seven people, “execution-style.” Three people were wounded.

April 6, 2012—Two men went on a deadly shooting spree in Tulsa, Oklahoma, shooting black men at random in an apparently racially motivated attack. Three men died and two were wounded.

May 29, 2012—A man in Seattle, Washington, opened fire in a coffee shop and killed five people and then himself.

July 9, 2012—At a soccer tournament in Wilmington, Delaware, three people were killed, including a 16-year-old player and the event organizer, when multiple gunmen began firing shots, apparently targeting the organizer.

July 20, 2012—James Holmes enters a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises and opens fire with a semi-automatic weapon; twelve people are killed and fifty-eight are wounded.

August 5, 2012—A white supremacist and former Army veteran shot six people to death inside a Sikh temple in suburban Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

August 14, 2012—Three people were killed at Texas A&M University when a 35-year-old man went on a shooting rampage; one of the dead was a police officer.

September 27, 2012—A 36-year-old man who had just been laid off from Accent Signage Systems in Minneapolis, Minnesota, entered his former workplace and shot five people to death, and wounded three others before killing himself.

October 21, 2012—45-year-old Radcliffe Frankin Haughton shot three women to death, including his wife, Zina Haughton, and injured four others at a spa in Brookfield, Wisconsin, before killing himself.

December 11, 2012—A 22-year-old began shooting at random at a mall near Portland, Oregon, killing two people and then himself.

December 14, 2012—One man, and possibly more, murders a reported twenty-six people at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, including twenty children, before killing himself.

This is not an isolated incident. The United States is a sick country, and I don't know if banning guns is the cure, but more guns certainly isn't.

But back to cut's point. It would be a lot easier to have a debate if you guns rights advocates actually were a bit more intellectually honest. Just go ahead and say it:

"The twenty murdered children in Newtown, CT are acceptable collateral damage for my right to own a gun, and I'm perfectly okay with that as the status quo."

Which one of you is going to be man enough to put your name next to that quote first?